Yesterday I read this letter to the editor in Tuesday's Mail Tribune from Gary Collins of Jacksonville. Part of the letter is below.

"Evidently, however, today's gun fabulists imagine themselves in an arms race, individual bulwarks against imminent domestic tyranny and deadly personal attacks. Although a good hunter needs only a bow or bolt-action .30-06 to bag a deer, the subtext of today's NRA propaganda cynically ennobles gun owners not as self-reliant family providers but as heroes before the fact, a brotherhood of patriotic knights, somehow ready to react decisively, alone or en masse, to a hazy montage of governmental threats to national integrity. The gun, especially the semiautomatic military variety, is thus hyped as a mythic icon of potency, an a priori badge of courage and resolve — imagery especially directed to the romantic conceits of adolescence."

At first I was angry about Collins' broadsides at the NRA and gun owners. Ultimately I was saddened that he, and others who think like him, are so flaccid with regard to their citizenship duties that all protections of life and liberty should be done by "government professionals", and furthered by the pre-emptive disarming of civilians.

Of course the letter was filled with typical anti-2nd Amendment distortions. First off, almost no gun owners own "military weapons". Arm the military with semi-automatic AR-15s, rather than the fully-automatic M-16 weapons they enjoy, and watch how quickly they become the national defense laughing stock of the world.

"Although a good hunter only needs a bolt-action or bow to bag a deer". Another common mis-direction of the 2nd Amendment's purpose. Do you see hunting mentioned in the second amendment? No, You don't.

His mention of "The individual's firepower was far more meager in Revolutionary times", while true, is a straw man argument. Given this logic, first amendment protections shouldn't apply to the MailTribune.Com, since computers didn't exist then in order to communicate.

In my opinion, Collins, and those who think like him, express comfort with being owned by the government. Their progressive view of the world requires that everything good and sweet, including rights, (they prefer privileges) springs from government power. How delusional, given that disarmed populations throughout history have found themselves marched into gulags, concentration camps, and re-education camps after finding themselves unable to say "no" to all that "government sweetness".

You say it can't happen here? The charismatic President Obama (thanks to bipartisan NDAA) already has amassed the power to declare any of us a terrorist, and subject to field executions by merely his say so. Federal security organs shred whats left of the 4th amendment and perform PATRIOT act surveillance on what you view, write about, purchase, eat, etc. Meanwhile, government goons sexually assault traveling men, women, and children, under the guise of national security theater. (Can we call it a police state yet?)

The 2nd amendment is a shining beacon in an otherwise dimming landscape of U.S. and worldwide liberty. It is a very important symbol indicating that ultimately the citizen controls the government, not the other way around. Enough of these encroachments on our rights from these "progressive" leftists and their partners in crime, the "right wing" authoritarians. The Bill of Rights is not negotiable.

To those who say the semi-automatic rifle, and high capacity magazines, have no place in self-defense, I ask you to consdier the Korean shopkeepers who held back the murderous hordes from their property in the 1994 L.A. riots. They did this using the very weapons Collins and others would deny to the people today. Don't be fooled by the collectivists and authoritarians among us. All this talk of "reasonable" gun control is really about the controlling of you, and the growth of ultimate government power.